Two weeks down....and many more great ones to come!

So the last three weeks (orientation + the first 2 weeks of classes) have been absolutely amazing. I've met almost our entire med school class, and everyone really seems great! It's so nice to be surrounded by people who are fun, but can also have really interesting conversations.

The last two weeks have pretty much been a big jump into med school, but so far it's been what I expected: a lot of work, but mostly interesting stuff. Also, everyone has remained pretty social, which is nice; however, the number of social outings has decreased, but that's to be expected.

Since so much has happened in the last few weeks, I'll try and hit the highlights:

We had our white coat ceremony at the end of orientation week and most people's parents/families came in town. I was a bit skeptical of the white coat ceremony because I thought it sounded kind of dumb, but it was actually really nice. It was also really cool to be able to get to meet a lot of people's parents/siblings/etc. Since I hadn't been home for almost a month, tt was great to see my parents for the weekend and get to hang out with them!

Last weekend we had the diversity retreat/ropes course. About 4/5 of the class came, which was awesome. We had the diversity retreat friday night and then stayed overnight in a hotel. The next day we went to a ropes course, which also included a climbing tower and some team-building activities. The diversity retreat was pretty fun, and we talked about some different case studies and how preconceived notions and assumptions about different types of people could affect the way you treated a patient. That night there was a killer dance party, where almost everyone there danced and had a GREAT time! The next day we broke into groups and rotated between the ropes course, climbing tower, and team-building activities. We were divided randomly into groups, which gave a great opportunity to get to know new people better. I was really impressed with how well everyone cooperated. I thought with so many high-achieving ambitious people it might be difficult, but we really didn't have any problems!

Last week, we started anatomy class and lab. It's definitely a little weird, but I think that it will be really valuable to see what we learn in class in a real body. I was really fine the first two days and then on Friday, I got a bit nauseaus, but I think that I'll get used to it. I guess part of me doesn't really want to get used to it just because I don't want to forget that we are dissecting a human body. It's tough striking a balance between objectifying and personalizing your cadaver.

We also had our first Primary Care Preceptroship (PCP) this week. PCPs are a part of the Practice of Medicine class (POM...as you can see we like abbreviations). You have 4 PCP visits throughout the year with the same physician. Mine was with a Internist whose office was about 20 minutes away from campus. He was amazing. He was very very nice, and he had a fantastic way of personally connecting with his patients. He also let me do a lot of things, like practicing how to interview a patient, which was really cool, but definitely kind of scary, since I've only been in med school for 2 weeks.

Today was the float trip (i.e. a tubing trip, for those of you from TX). I didn't go because I wanted some extra down time this weekend to rest and try and get some things done, like cleaning, but I suspect it was a fantastic time. I'm really glad I didn't go though because I think I'm getting sick, so it was good to have the extra time at home.

Well, I think that's all of the highlights for now.

Nerdy Med School Pick Up Line of the Day!

Hey, you want to go back to my place and anastamose?

**For those of you that weren't in class today, anastamose was defined as "hooking up"

Will post more later.

A quick anatomical anecdote

I never hesitated with the cadaver. I saw it as an object from the start, and this is clear in the manner in which I dissect. While everyone else pokes timidly, I follow my Grant’s dissector verbatim in that “in the context of this dissection manual, the meaning of dissect is to tear apart.” I dive in as I would do when taking apart a car, computer, or vacuum cleaner. Today, however, I stopped for the first time. In order to relax the pectoralis major, the arm needs to be adducted and flexed. One of my partners was struggling to get his hands under the muscle, so I grabbed the cadaver’s hand to pull it toward the median. That’s when, for a split second, I paused; in lifting the arm, the fingers tightened a little. It is horrendously cliché, but it really reminded me that this human body was once a human being.

(Dis)oriented!

So suddenly there is a lot more about which I should write, but as a result there is only a small fraction of the time to write. Here’s my lame attempt to catch you up on what it means to be an MSTP:

So starting from L’s definition of rocktastic (a word derived as a description of what it feels like to be at a bar with most of the 1^st years and a $1000 tab that needed to be polished off), the last few weeks have been an absolutely amazing time. The remainder of orientation week went like this: be at the LTC by 8:30 AM or so, be orientated until anywhere from 3 to 5 depending on the day, nap for an hour, go out and party like rockstars until 1:00 (or 3:00, or 6:00 AM, depending on the night and your degree of rocktasticallity) only to wake (assuming you went to bed) and go back in at 8:30 the next morning. The class bonded exceptionally well, and the MSTPs for the most part are an even tighter subsection of the med class. This is not to say that we aren’t completely rooted with the rest of the M1s, but the MSTPs tend to have dinner parties or other functions before the other events because we really enjoy the conversations we have as a group. Pool parties, sports in the park, movies, and pub crawls have been the norm. Classes started and everyone dove right in, taking it very seriously and at the same time making plenty of time for fun. The diversity retreat was awesome (everyone, literally every single person, had a blast. Do it next year.) and we have the float trip coming up next weekend on top of all that.

Honestly, these three weeks (WUMP through present) have been the best I can remember. Plus, anatomy is SO COOL and we MSTPs get to have a free lunch after our Wednesday lab, and the smell of formalin makes you really, really hungry.

Things that suck:

· A lot of food in my fridge went bad because I haven’t had the need to eat more than 3 or 4 meals at home in the last few weeks. This isn’t so bad, because that means we’ve been dined a lot.

· Some of the IT stuff has still been rocky, especially for the MSTPs here this summer. We couldn’t log into the carrel computers for a while, our medportal (the site that has all of the class notes) has been sketchy with access, and the wireless was a bit of a pain to set up since the IT dept. needs to commandeer your laptop for a day or so to do it for you.

That’s about all I can come up with. Sorry about the poor writing here; I am watching a dissection video online while writing so my attention is about 25%.

-R

ROCKTASTIC

New word of the week:
Rocktastic
Pronunciation:\räk-ˈtas-tik\
Function: adjective
Date: 2007
Origin: Goiffonian/Fogelian hybrid
Etymology: A combination of the word rock, which originates from Middle English rokken, from Old English roccian; akin to Old High German rucken to cause to move, and fantastic, which comes form Middle English fantastic, fantastical, from Middle French & Late Latin; Middle French fantastique, from Late Latin phantasticus, from Greek phantastikos producing mental images, from phantazein to present to the mind.
1: Utter and total awesomeness, often accompanied with great happiness and mild inebriation.
Synonyms: Reesolicious, rocktacular

An official Missourian

As of this afternoon, I am officially a Missourian. Anyway, so I am now officially a Missouri resident because I got a MO drivers license this afternoon. I was especially impressed by how easy the process was. There was no line, and I was done with everything in less than 30 minutes.

I guess technically you could say I always have been one since I was born in MO, but I grew up on the Kansas side of the state line and there was always a bit of teasing between the kids that lived in MO vs those that lived in KS (for those of you that didn't know there is a Kansas City, MO and a Kansas City, KS separated by the state line). Although to many of you being from KS may not seem like something one would be proud of (after all our state board of education did outlaw teaching evolution and everyone thinks all there is in KS are farms, tornadoes, and Dorothy and the other characters from the Wizard of Oz), I am proud of KS. Especially in high school, it was better to be from KS than from MO because you got to drive earlier (you can get your learner's permit at 14 and a restricted license at 15, which allows you to drive to school and work by yourself, and in MO you can't get your permit until you're 15 or 15.5, I can't remember).

It's kind of funny how getting a small card can mean something. It really makes it seem real that I am starting this new part of my life, and i am going to be here for the next several years (I'm not really ready to start guessing the exact number, so we'll leave it at several). Furthermore, after such a fun summer, I'm really excited that I'll be here for a while. When I first told people I was applying or coming to WashU, some people were curious and even skeptical of what there was to do in St. Louis, but as hopefully this blog has at least partially described, there is a TON of stuff to do. Despite all of the exploring that we have done this summer, there is still so many things that we have not done and areas that we still need to explore. Anyway, we had our MSTP orientation this morning and then med school orientation starts tomorrow. Hopefully, it's not too boring, but at least it seems there will be lots of food and at least time to have fun at night.

A "non-WUMPers" view of WUMP week

This week did mark a definite change of pace from our usual summer antics as most of the new arrivals were eager to start exploring the city (especially the central west end, however we did venture to the Hill last night to play bocce ball)! I also was not able to do WUMP because of my summer research rotation, but it sounded like everyone really enjoyed it and I'm also a bit jealous of the different things that they got to do. However, having a few days between my research rotation and orientation was really nice to be able to get some stuff done before things got crazy again.


I'm definitely someone who kind of likes to ease into things, so it was nice to be able to meet another wave of new people before the whole med school class gets here. It's been really nice that everyone has been so excited and willing to explore the city, and hopefully that will continue throughout the year, although probably the pace of social events will be a bit slower (which I think my desire for sleep and bank account will appreciate). It's been really interesting how diverse the group is, and I am guessing that will also be true for the entire med school class.

I feel like these types of preorientation/orientation times are really interesting because everyone is meeting tons of new people and trying to make new friends, but it is such an extremely unusual social situation that I find it hard to really get to know what people will be like normally. However, there's really no rush since we'll be spending at least the next 2 years with all of the med school kids and 6-8 with all of the MSTPers.

**These are some pics from last night at Tom's Bar and Grill, which has karaoke on the weekends.

WUMP week

As mentioned earlier, things are bustling around here. We MSTPs and research-oriented meds have been up to our usual fun and games for the last month or so, but everything rapidly changed pace last Monday with the beginning of WUMP.

WUMP is the Washington University Medical Plunge, a weeklong foray into the world of medicine and serving the underprivileged. St. Louis offers a lot of chances to do this, from Planned Parenthood to shadowing a doctor at a prison, from a sexual abuse clinic to a homeless shelter. Only three MSTPs (that I know of) participated in WUMP this year, but had it not been for our lab rotations more of us would have applied. I really wanted to go see the correctional facility, but alas I had data to collect.

WUMP also gives you a head start on the social scene. The 40ish people participating in WUMP get to do the introduction and name learning a week earlier than the other meds, and any rotating MSTPs still in their labs may quickly find themselves out of the loop. WUMP is long in the daytime hours, but at night everyone goes out in one big group that for the most part has no cliques established yet and live like rockstars. It’s great. Yesterday we got about 40 people together in the 100 °F heat and played ultimate Frisbee for 2-3 hours. With a large group of intelligent people like this, it’d be hard for us to have anything but constant fun in a new city.

However, it seems that the uniform solidarity of the WUMP group lasts about a week, as last night I noticed the first evidence of cliques forming while we belted out our favorite songs at a karaoke bar. (Not that this is a terrible thing, as it’s pretty much guaranteed with a group larger than a dozen). With the MSTP orientation beginning tomorrow morning, a day earlier than the meds, the science geeks will be retiring a little earlier than previous nights. We’ll need the rest, too, for on Tuesday we will meet another 80 or so people that comprise the rest of our med school class. Alright, my phone is beeping with texts every few minutes because I am pulling together a dozen for dinner. Hopefully one of the other writers will be able to specifically write more about WUMP.

I haven't forgotten you

So I have been meaning to write all week… but the week kinda got in the way of that. WUMP! I wasn’t actually in WUMP, but it did mean that about 40 new students showed up. On top of that, we have a few new MSTP arrivals since Friday.

Tomorrow’s high is in the low 100’s, so staying in to give my WUMP week report will be a perfect excuse to stay in and soak up the AC. Well, that and the fact that I arrived home at 1:45 tonight and this was the earliest I have come home all week. Partying like that really takes a lot out of a fella.

If I don’t follow through, post a comment of scorn!

Sicko of Sicko?

So we went to famous Blueberry Hill on Saturday night. I was shocked: the food was satisfying, the prices weren’t too high, the drinks weren’t extravagantly priced, and the music was low enough that I could actually converse with friends. Oh, and they have a dart range. Real darts, not crappy plastic ones. I’ll save you the boring “this is what we did” details; I’d rather just wrap it up by saying that we MSTPs have not been an exclusive group at all. I’ve spent time getting to know undergrads, MD students, grad students, and even a townie or two (e.g. Blueberry Hill night was a diverse group). I got the feeling from other places/MSTPs that it can sometimes get pretty segregated. Hopefully we keep this social scene open.

But on now to the main topic of this post: I went to go see Sicko with a med student and a CS grad student before going to Blueberry Hill. Let me start by saying that it is certainly worth seeing for us, the future doctors. Healthcare is a multi-faceted issue that needs attention; there are no two sides, no 3 sides, no 10 sides to it… and there are no easy answers to fixing our system. Sicko presents solutions taken in other countries (namely France, the UK, Canada, and Cuba) as obvious and easy. Moore relies on almost purely anecdotal evidence, and judging by the responses emitted by my fellow moviegoers, I would say that this was adequate to speak to most of the public. But I am a scientist, dammit! Where are the data, Mike? Where are your sources? How can you say with such confidence that A and B go beyond correlation into the realm of causation? Clearly, I had some issues with the film. For instance, he is quick to make connections such as “France has socialized health care, and the French live longer. Therefore, socialized healthcare is better.” Basically the film is loaded with Moore’s arguments that sound plausible but aren’t presented with a factual foundation. Are they still valid arguments? Some of them are, yes. Should a future doctor see the film? I believe they should. Should a scientist see the film? Yes, and try to accompany somebody who isn’t as used to thinking critically. Should you agree with Michael Moore? I can’t tell you that. But please, don’t just take his word for it.

Two weeks until orientation. I swear, entries will be much more MSTP-related. I swear. Maybe.